God's Secret Plan: File #4

At the end of Ephesians 1, Paul was praying that the people of Ephesus would grow in their knowledge of God's plan and about the power of God, the power which is at work in us, in the church. But this is all very general. Moving to chapter 2, the focus becomes personal. Paul switches from “we” to “you.” Perhaps he was thinking of specific people at Ephesus as he wrote. They had known the power of God in a very direct, personal way and it had changed them forever. This, then, is the theme of chapter two: “The transformation of believers in Christ.”

In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul describes the previous condition of his readers. Though he may have been thinking of specific people at Ephesus, what he writes is true of all Christians. All those who are now Christians, who are now part of the church, have this same history. Just as the we said the measure of the power of God can be seen in the difference between Christ's death and His resurrection, so we also see that measure of power in the difference between our past state and our present state, in Christ.

The main thing to notice about their past state is that they were dead. Paul describes them as being dead in trespasses and sins. We can understand what this means if we picture something like a branch which has been cut from a tree. Because it has been separated from the source of its life, it is dead. It will not grow any bigger; it will not produce blossoms or fruit--it is dead. It is dead even though, at first, it may not look any different from the branches on the tree. It is only as time passes that its true state becomes apparent. The leaves will slowly brown and fall off; the wood will slowly dry and begin to crack. All the good which existed in the branch was due solely to the life of the tree and so, once it is separated from it, it begins to wither away.

Sin brought disunion between the world and God who is the source of all life. That is why the world is dying physically and why all people are (in principle) dead spiritually. The result of sin is death because sin means separation from God. As all men are sinners, so all men are dead, though, just like the branch cut from the tree, they may appear alive at first. But just as with the branch, in time (or eternity), the fact will become clear. What good exists in them does not come from them and will wither away. The people to whom Paul wrote, then, were (1) dead in their nature--dead in trespasses and sins, at disunion with God. And this fact lead to several others.

They were (2) dead in lifestyle. They walked “according to the course of this world.” The concept of death can be extended from the nature of a man to his actions and to the actions of all men. Because man is dead, he acts in a certain manner. It is not consistently and coherently bad, but it is dead--unable to generate and sustain life. And because all men are dead, this lifestyle of death belongs to all men and is “lived” by all men, by all nations. Though the particular manifestations of this principle change from time to time and from place to place, there is a basic pattern or principle which is at work in all individuals and so all societies. And the people to whom Paul was writing were once part of this universal pattern. “There is much force in these expressions; the Ephesians had not sinned casually, or now and then, but continually; it was their continual employment; they walked in trespasses and sins: and this was not a solitary case, all the nations of the earth acted in the same way; it was the course of this world...” (Clarke, Eph. 2:2)

(3) They were dead in allegiance, members of a kingdom of death and sin, walking “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Knowingly or unknowingly, they were acting as members of Satan's kingdom, following his ways, and acting in rebellion to the Kingdom of God.

The reason they did all this was because (4) they were dead in their desires. They lived their lives “in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” The word translated lusts comes from a word which means “to set the heart upon, i.e. long for (rightfully or otherwise):--covet, desire.”  (Strong #1937) The followed after the things they desired, putting their treasure where their heart was also. In other words, their personal desires--the desires of the flesh and the mind--were their guide in life. Without the authority of God to direct the life, a person's desires, “the desires of the flesh and the mind,” had become the ruling force. These desires, not necessarily bad in and of themselves, had been given absolute power in their life--and what does absolute power do? It corrupts absolutely. Because they were dead, their desires were no longer subject to the authority of life, of God, and therefore became corrupted.

Finally, because of all this, they were (5) dead in destination, they were “children of wrath”--that is to say, they were objects of the wrath of God, they were subject to the judgment of God because of their sin. As a branch that is cut off from the tree has no future except to dry up and shrivel away, so, being dead in sin, they had no future except more and more, fuller and fuller death. Because they were walking “according to the course of this world,” their would reach the destination of that path--and the path of death can only lead to more death.

This was the picture of the people to whom Paul wrote, and he includes himself in it. And there is an interesting thing in this passage. Note verse 3: “Among whom all of us also... even as the rest.” This description applies to all people. All people who have walked upon this earth (save One) fit into this description--dead in nature, in lifestyle, in allegiance, in desires, and in destination. Obviously, this death is not present in the same degree or form in every individual or even every society, but it is still true that all people fit within this description. And yet Paul is speaking of a specific group--a group of people at Ephesus though one in which he also includes himself. All that Paul says is true about this smaller group as it is about all mankind. There was nothing special about them, nothing which, in principle set them apart. He does not say they were less dead or less corrupted than all of mankind. It wasn't that they were Jews while the rest of the world was Gentiles, for both Jews and Gentiles were dead in sin and both Jews and Gentiles were included in this group at Ephesus. They were dead “even as the rest.” And yet... yet there was something that made a demarcation between them and the rest of mankind. At one point, you could have looked at them and not seen they were any different from the rest of the world. And yet now, you could. Something had happened, something which made them different even though they had not been different before. Something had happened. And that something is Ephesians 2:4-10: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

The climax of this passage is verse 5. Paul and those to whom he wrote had, like all people, been “dead in sins.” That is where their story began, but that isn't where it ended. “But God... hath [made us alive] together with Christ.” As Spurgeon puts it, “We were without spiritual life, but now we are made alive unto God; regeneration is as great a wonder as if the corpses in the churchyard should burst their graves and begin life again. Grace is life, sin is death, conversion is a resurrection.” (Spurgeon's Devotional Commentary, Ephesians 2:1) The thing that made the difference between the group Paul addressed and the rest of the world was the act of God, which had made them alive.

We saw before that the measure of God's power can be seen in the contrast between Jesus in His death and in His exaltation. The power of God was able to take a lifeless corpse, restore it to life, and exalt Jesus as the supreme man over all things. And that is the same power which at work in us. The same power which can bring a corpse to life can bring sinners, dead in sin, back to true life.

But, in fact, the connection is a little closer than that. We are made alive together with Christ. We were dead in sin. Christ bore our sin and so died. And God raised Him from the dead so that we might, with him, be raised again. Christ shares in our death, becoming (though He was not by nature) a child of wrath, bearing the wrath of God, so that we might share in His life and even in His exultation. Not only do we live with him, but we SIT with him in Heavenly places. We are not merely saved, but adopted--not just given life but given a home--not just delivered from Hell, but seated in Heavenly Places. This and this alone is what made the difference in the life of the Ephesians, of all Christians. It was that they had been given new life. Paul put it elsewhere: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

We have been made alive. Paul does not go into details exactly what this new life is, except that it is the life of Christ. But we can see a picture of if we contrast it with the description of death given in verses 1-3. If we have are no longer dead but have been made alive, then we are alive (1) in nature (for we now share in the nature of Christ), (2) in lifestyle (for we are created unto good works that we should walk in them), (3) in allegiance (for we are now sitting in heavenly places with the heavenly king), (4) in our desires, and (5) in our destination.

So the first main thing to notice in this passage is that we have been made alive with Christ. The second thing is that this is “the gift of God.” It is God who made us alive. Life can only be communicated by life. Only a living tree can produce seeds. Man could not initiate salvation because he was dead. God, as the source of all life, is the only one who could make us alive. This He did, because of He “is rich in mercy,” because of “his great love wherewith he loved us” and “by grace.” All three of these phrases point to back to what we saw in Chapter 1--God took the initiative in salvation, acting out of His own good pleasure. God saved man, not because man deserved salvation, but because God had mercy, love, and grace. Here Paul says that God loved us with his great love even when we were dead in sins. God did not make us alive so that He could love us; He made us alive because He loved us. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) It was not merely God's pity, but His love--and there is all the difference in the world between pity and love.

It is very important to note this point that this new life is a gift of God, founded on the mercy, grace, and love of God--so important that Paul says it multiple times and in multiple ways even in this short passage. Verses 8-9 are the most direct: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

There are many things we are entitled to because of various reason--our talents, our actions, or merely our birth or education. But this only applies to our interactions with one another. We have nothing that entitles us to anything from God. The reason is obvious. The apple can't demand anything from the apple tree on the grounds of its sweetness and soundness, because the apples owes all that to the tree. Man cannot demand anything from God on the basis of his gifts, talents, abilities, wealth, birth, education, or even virtue, because all the good in those things come from God. In fact, so long as man is dead, separated from God, all the good in him exists IN SPITE of himself. A dead man can do nothing to earn new life for himself. If he is to get it at all, it must be a gift. But if it is a gift, than no man can boast. No one can say, “God gave me new life because I ______. He may give you new life too, but I have a special claim to it.” All that is excluded, because the new life we have is a GIFT. Therefore, no man can merit it. And by the same token, any man can have it. If this new life could only be obtained by people of a certain nationality or a certain aptitude or certain level of achievement, then obviously there would be some one who could never receive it. But because it is a gift, which can be earned by nobody, it can be received by anybody. Verse 10 takes this a step farther, when Paul says we are God's “workmanship, created in Jesus Christ.” We are something that God has made, something God has crafted and built. If we are the thing built than we can have no credit in the process of building. Clarke comments: “So far is this salvation from being our own work, or granted for our own works' sake, that we are ourselves not only the creatures of God, but our new creation was produced by his power.” We did not make our salvation--it was in giving us salvation that God made us. Our new life is a gift given by God, without consideration of our own worthiness.

We have offered new life, the gift of grace, by the death of Christ. Hebrews 2:9 tells us who Jesus died for and who, therefore, has been given this grace, this possibility of new life: every man. But not every man has this new life. Because it is a gift, the point of differentiation cannot be their worthiness since a gift is given irrespective of worthiness. So what does make the difference? Why do some have this new life while some do not? Verse 8 tells us the reason, the point of demarcation--Faith. The only way to receive a gift is by believing in the giver. Faith is an act of the will by which we take God at His word and accept this gift of new life. The world is not divided by those who need salvation and those who don't (for all need it); the world is not divided into those who deserve salvation and those who don't (for none deserve it)--the world is divided into those who believe and those who do not. All men are dead; but some men, by faith, have received new life.

This new life we receive in Christ is a miracle. A miracle is, by definition, a break or interruption in the natural course of life. It a thing which the natural course of life would not have produced but which comes about by the direct intervention of God. But though it is a break or interruption to the natural course of things, once it has happened, it has certain consequences. When Jesus made the miraculous meal for the five thousands, the leftover had to be gathered and saved just as if it had been a natural meal. When Lazarus was resurrected, he had to get on with his life. And in the same way, when we are given new life, it has certain consequences, certain things follow from it just as when we receive physical life at birth.

This new life has purpose. In verse 7 Paul says that by bringing us to life, God has shown to the world through all ages “the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us.” (Note the repetition of “riches of grace” from chapter 1.) Most of the commentators take this in the sense that God's work in saving the specific people at Ephesus is a testimony to all people, even to us today, about the grace of God. In each generation, God is making dead people alive as a testimony to all those who come after--a testimony to the power and the riches of his grace. This is an echo of chapter 1 where Paul said that we were saved for the praise of the glory of God's grace.

There is another purpose, one which we have already touched on: verse 10 says we were “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Note that this was before ordained or prepared beforehand, another echo of chapter 1 where we saw that God's plan of salvation was planned from the foundation of the world. God had planned what saved people would be like before there were any people to be saved.

But what specifically God prepared for us was that we might walk in good works, in doing that which is good, that which is in accordance with God's will, that which is pleasing to God and helpful to man. This encompasses all morality, all the law. One of the testimonies of Jesus was that He went about doing good, and here we find out that that is God's will for us as well.

There is a tension here between verses 9 and 10. On one hand, our salvation is “not of works” (good or otherwise) and yet, on the other, we have been created “unto good works.” In other words, these good works are the effect but not the cause of salvation. They are the purpose but not the means.

There is nothing a dead man can do to bring himself back to life, but if he is brought back to life he will behave differently than he did when he was dead. Having a life, new life, necessarily implies a change of behavior. Being brought back to life, one would think, is a drastic change and it should result in drastic changes. If we are alive we ought to live differently. This is a main theme of the latter half of Ephesians and of Colossans. Because we are sitting with Christ, raised, in Heavenly Places, we must also walk with Christ and stand for Him.

Unfortunately, too many people do not want new life but an insurance policy--not a present change but a future protection. But that is not what God has promised to give us. The promise is of new life now, being now made alive with Christ, now raised up together, now sitting in heavenly place, now walking in good works. If we accept the gift of new life, we have to take with it the responsibility of living.